Zoey pressed play and stepped back. The television screen filled with darkness.
Then a sound came; the low, mechanical hum of servers, the rapid percussion of keyboards, the particular tension of a room that knew something had gone wrong before anyone had said it out loud.
Nobody in Zoey's hotel room spoke. Nobody moved.
The first frame bloomed cold and electric. A server control room drowning in blue light.
Monitors stacked floor to ceiling pulsed in soft, sickly rhythm, throwing shadows across the faces of three technicians who tapped at their keyboards with the rapid, panicked cadence of men who already knew something had gone wrong.
One of them froze mid-keystroke.
[DEFENSE BREACHED!]
[DEFENSE BREACHED!]
[DEFENSE BREACHED!]
The words defense breached landed in the room on screen and in the room off screen simultaneously. Every person watching felt it.
The technicians had beads of sweat dripping down their brows as they saw this...
